u;
Here your _Centurions_ hath no part at all,
Bootless your Armies and your Eagles were;
No Navies helpt to bring away this conquest.

_Nimph_. Even Fortunes selfe, Fortune the Queene of Kingdomes,
That Warrs grim valour graceth with her deeds,
Will claime no portion in this Victorie.

_Nero_. Not _Bacchus_[7] drawn from Nisa downe with Tigers,
Curbing with viny rains their wilful heads
Whilst some doe gape upon his Ivy Thirse,
Some on the dangling grapes that crowne his head,
All praise his beautie and continuing youth;
So strooke amased India with wonder
As _Neroes_ glories did the Greekish townes,
_Elis_ and _Pisa_ and the rich _Micenae,
Junonian Argos_ and yet _Corinth_ proud
Of her two Seas; all which ore-come did yeeld
To me their praise and prises of their games.

_Poppea_. Yet in your _Greekish_ iourney, we do heare,
_Sparta_ and _Athens_, the two eyes of _Greece_,
Neither beheld your person or your skill;
Whether because they did afford no games
Or for their too much gravitie.

_Nero_. Why, what
Should I have seene in them? but in the one
Hunger, black pottage and men hot to die
Thereby to rid themselves of misery:
And what in th'other? but short Capes, long Beards;
Much wrangling in things needlesse to be knowne,
Wisedome in words and onely austere faces.
I will not be Aieceleaus nor Solon.
Nero was there where he might honour win;
And honour hath he wonn and brought from _Greece_
Those spoyles which never Roman could obtaine,
Spoyles won by witt and _Tropheis_ of his skill.

_Nimph_. What a thing he makes it to be a Minstrill!

_Poppea_. I prayse your witt, my Lord, that choose such safe
Honors, safe spoyles, won without dust or blood.

_Nero_. What, mock ye me, _Poppea_?

_Poppea_. Nay, in good faith, my Lord, I speake in earnest:
I hate that headie and adventurous crew
That goe to loose their owne to purchase but
The breath of others and the common voyce;
Them that will loose their hearing for a sound,
That by death onely seeke to get a living,
Make skarrs there beautie and count losse of Limmes
The commendation of a proper man,
And soe goe halting to immortality--
Such fooles I love worse then they doe their lives.

_Nero_. But now, _Poppea_, having laid apart
Our boastfull spoyles and ornaments of Triumph,
Come we like _Jove_ from _Phlegra_--

_Poppea_. O Giantlike comparison!

_Nero_. When after all his Fiers and wandering darts
He comes to bath himsel